On the profoundness and preconditions of social responses towards social robots : experimental investigations using indirect measurement techniques

Riether N. On the profoundness and preconditions of social responses towards social robots : experimental investigations using indirect measurement techniques. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2013

Systematic Adaptation of Communication-focused Machine Learning Models from Real to Virtual Environments for Human-Robot Collaboration

Virtual reality has proved to be useful in applications in several fields ranging from gaming, medicine, and training to development of interfaces that enable human-robot collaboration. It empowers designers to explore applications outside of the constraints posed by the real world environment and develop innovative solutions and experiences. Hand gestures recognition which has been a topic of much research and subsequent commercialization in the real world has been possible because of the creation of large, labelled datasets. In order to utilize the power of natural and intuitive hand gestures in the virtual domain for enabling embodied teleoperation of collaborative robots, similarly large datasets must be created so as to keep the working interface easy to learn and flexible enough to add more gestures. Depending on the application, this may be computationally or economically prohibitive. Thus, the adaptation of trained deep learning models that perform well in the real environment to the virtual may be a solution to this challenge. This paper presents a systematic framework for the real to virtual adaptation using limited size of virtual dataset along with guidelines for creating a curated dataset. Finally, while hand gestures have been considered as the communication mode, the guidelines and recommendations presented are generic. These are applicable to other modes such as body poses and facial expressions which have large datasets available in the real domain which must be adapted to the virtual one

Influencing Hand-washing Behaviour with a Social Robot: HRI Study with School Children in Rural India

The work presented in this paper reports the influence of a social robot on hand washing behaviour on school children in rural India with a significant presence of indigenous tribes. We describe the design choices of our social robot to cater the requirements of the intervention. The custom built wall mounted social robot encouraged 100 children to wash their hand at appropriate time (before meal and after toilet) using the correct handwashing technique via a poster on a wall. The results indicate that the intervention using the robot was found to be effective (40% rise) at increasing levels of hand washing with soap and with a better handwashing technique in ecologically valid settings

Social presence and the composite face effect

A robust finding in social psychology research is that performance is modulated by the social nature of a given context promoting social inhibition or facilitation effects. In the present experiment, we examined if and how social presence impacts holistic face perception processes by asking participants, in the presence of others and alone, to perform the composite face task. Results suggest that completing the task in the presence of others (i.e., mere co-action) is associated with better performance in face recognition (less bias and higher discrimination between presented and non-presented targets) and with a reduction in the composite face effect. These results make clear that social presence impact on the composite face effect does not occur because presence increases reliance on holistic processing as a "dominant" well-learned response, but instead, because it increases monitoring of the interference produced by automatic response.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Can virtual observers affect our behavior? : social facilitation in virtual environments : a mini-review

The social facilitation effect describes the change in the performance of the task under the influence of the presence of observers. The effect itself consists of two components: social facilitation in simple tasks and social inhibition in complex tasks. In the context of the dynamic development of new technologies, the question of the possible influence on human behavior by virtual characters gains importance. We attempted to critically describe and summarize current research on social facilitation in order to answer the question of whether it occurs in virtual environments. We found 13 relevant studies, 3 of which demonstrated social facilitation, 4 social inhibition and 1 demonstrated the whole effect. The conclusions drawn from the analysis are ambiguous. Firstly, we identified that 12 out of 13 analyzed studies failed to show the whole effect. Secondly, we encountered several shortcomings of the summarized research that further complicated its interpretation. The shortcomings: presence of the researcher, unclear usage of "agent" and "avatar", evaluation of activation, no pilot tests of observers and no description of how their characteristics are generated, among others, are discussed. Furthermore, we investigated the effect sizes and their variability. The average effect size for social facilitation was g = 0.18, CI [-0.28; 0.64] and for social inhibition g = -0.18, CI [-0.40; 0.04]. In social facilitation, a substantial level of heterogeneity was detected. Finally, we conclude that it is still too early to provide a definite answer to the question of whether social facilitation exists in Virtual Environments. We recommend limiting evaluation activation to the lowest possible level, conducting pilot tests prior to the experiment, avoiding the presence of the researcher in the experimental room and a clear distinction of "gent" and "avatar", as measures to achieve a better quality in future research

Interventions to prevent loneliness in older adults living in nursing homes

Introduction: The number of older adults is increasing worldwide, as a result their need for institutionalized care is rising. One of the problems older adults experience when going to a nursing home is loneliness. Loneliness affects the person quality of life, so it is vital to help prevent it with appropriate interventions. Objective: To explore the different kind of interventions to prevent loneliness of older adults living in nursing homes. Methodology: This systematic review used three databases (PubMed, CINAHL, and PsycInfo) and searched for articles from 2010 to 2020 using search terms like “older adults”, “prevent”, “loneliness”, and “intervention”. From an initial 124 articles, 16 articles were selected at the end. Results: Two main themes were found: person-to-person/group interventions and technological interventions. All interventions showed positive results in reducing the perception of loneliness. Group interventions showed high success on reduction of loneliness. For technological intervention, the use of a pet robot created an atmosphere where residents socialize. Videoconferencing and messaging showed the need of a third party implication. Conclusion: Interventions found in this review are an effective way of alleviating loneliness even if interventions were vaguely described, and there was not follow up for long-term effectiveness.Introducción: El número de personas mayores está incrementando en todo el mundo, por lo que la necesidad de cuidados para personas institucionalizadas aumentará. Uno de los problemas que las personas mayores experimentan cuando van a una residencia es la soledad. La soledad afecta a la calidad de vida de las personas, por lo que es importante prevenirla mediante intervenciones apropiadas. Objetivo: Presentar diferentes tipos de intervenciones para prevenir la soledad en personas mayores institucionalizadas. Material y métodos: Está revisión utilizó tres bases de datos (PubMed, CINAHL y PsycInfo) y se buscaron artículos entre los años 2010-2020. Se utilizaron términos cómo “older adults”, “prevent”, “loneliness” y “intervention”. De una selección inicial de 124 artículos, se seleccionaron 16 artículos. Resultados: Se encontraron dos temas principales: intervenciones entre personas o grupos de personas e intervenciones tecnológicas. Todas las intervenciones mostraron resultados positivos. Las intervenciones grupales mostraron una gran efectividad. Las intervenciones de videoconferencias y mensajes necesitaban a una tercera personas para poder llevarse a cabo. Las relacionadas con el robot Paro creaban una atmósfera donde los residentes les resultaba más fácil interaccionar. Conclusiones: Las intervenciones fueron efectivas para aliviar la soledad, a pesar de descripciones imprecisas de las intervenciones y la falta de seguimiento a largo plazo

Can robots tackle late-life loneliness? : Scanning of future opportunities and challenges in assisted living facilities

This future-oriented study examines the opportunities and challenges offered by social robots and communication technology when aiming to decrease emotional and social loneliness in older people residing in assisted living (AL). The paper draws on prior literature on loneliness, elder care and social robots. The aim is to scan the futures regarding technology support for the frail older people in future AL. The analytical frame was built on Robert Weiss’ division of relational functions: attachment, social integration, opportunity for nurturance, reassurance of worth, sense of reliable alliance, and guidance in stressful situations, and on a distinction between direct and indirect social robots. Our examinations show that social robots could tackle both emotional and social loneliness in assisted living by empowering people to engage in different forms of social interaction inside and outside the facility. However, ethical concerns of objectification, lack of human contact, and deception need to be thoroughly considered when implementing social robots in care for frail older people.Peer reviewe

God-like robots : the semantic overlap between representation of divine and artificial entities

Artificial intelligence and robots may progressively take a more and more prominent place in our daily environment. Interestingly, in the study of how humans perceive these artificial entities, science has mainly taken an anthropocentric perspective (i.e., how distant from humans are these agents). Considering people’s fears and expectations from robots and artificial intelligence, they tend to be simultaneously afraid and allured to them, much as they would be to the conceptualisations related to the divine entities (e.g., gods). In two experiments, we investigated the proximity of representation between artificial entities (i.e., artificial intelligence and robots), divine entities and natural entities (i.e., humans and other animals) at both an explicit (Study 1) and an implicit level (Study 2). In the first study, participants evaluated these entities explicitly on positive and negative attitudes. Hierarchical clustering analysis showed that participants’ representation of artificial intelligence, robots and divine entities were similar, while the representation of humans tended to be associated with that of animals. In the second study, participants carried out a word/non-word decision task including religious semantic-related words and neutral words after the presentation of a masked prime referring to divine entities, artificial entities and natural entities (or a control prime). Results showed that after divine and artificial entity primes, participants were faster to identify religious words as words compared to neutral words arguing for a semantic activation. We conclude that people make sense of the new entities by relying on already familiar entities and in the case of artificial intelligence and robots, people appear to draw parallels to divine entities